This is justin for Blood and Dust. I'm presenting this two part series as
a little added bonus. I suppose you could say, we're gonna do it
in a two part series, and I will say this. We try to
keep this show family friendly, and we do that for a reason. We
try to appeal to everybody for educational, for historical purposes. This particular series
right here has a lot of swearing in it. All right, there's a
lot of four letter words. So if you have a problem with that,
please turn it off right now now. If you want to know about the
real Doc Holiday, I highly suggest you tune in, because you are really
going to love this. I found him a loyal friend and good company.
He was a dentist whom necessity had made a gambler, a gentleman whom disease
had made a vagabond, a philosopher whom life had made, a caustic wit,
a long, lean, blonde fellow nearly dead with consumption, and at
the same time the most skillful gambler and nervoust speediest, deadliest man with his
six gun I ever knew Wyat speaking of Doc Holiday, who was this man
who could joke in the face of death, who actually asked his opponent to
shoot him. Doc Holiday was one whiskey soaked bullet spitting so on a thunder
whose only saving grace was that he assuming dead. John Henry Holiday was born
August fourteenth, eighteen fifty one, in Griffin, Georgia. He was born
to a pretty well to do, an upper middle class family of English and
Scottish descent. He was baptized March twenty first, eighteen fifty two, in
First Presbyterian Church of Griffin. His older sister did die in infancy. Her
name was Martha Eleanora, which would have been the year before Doc was actually
born. So when Doc was born, he ended up being the only child
and his family was very just extremely happy. But Doc was born with pretty
good birth defect. He was born with a cleft palate and a cleft lip,
so he actually had to be fed from an eye dropper and a little
tiny cup. His uncle, John Styles Holiday ended up doing the surgery to
correct it because he was a doctor. But he did suffer for a little
bit of a speech impediment, you know, his southern drawl was said to
be a little bit off, and his you know, mother kind of really
was very protective of him, because back then, you know, something like
that was seen as like bad breeding. I guess you could say. I
mean, he ended up doing pretty well for himself. He had a very
notable family tree as well. Not to go off on a side tangent here,
but I mean his doctor uncle John Styles Holiday, he built a Greek
Revival house in eighteen fifty five in Fayette County, which is now a local
museum. He had one relative, also named John Holliday, who is the
founder of Holiday, Utah. He just happened to be a Mormon, which
you know, to each their own, but he was part of the group
that settled and ended up founding what is now known as San Bernardino, California
as well. So that's a pretty interesting little fact. Yeah, Doc ended
up growing up pretty good. His mother would give him speech therapy. She
was very protective of him. Like I had mentioned, she was worried about
society, the community, you know, thinking down on their family, you
know, thinking down of John. And that was their only child, so
you know, she made it a point to work with him very, very
hard. She taught him how to play piano by the you know, as
soon as he could reach the keys. She was given him piano lessons.
So young John Henry Holiday, who would later become known as Doc, was
a very good piano player as well. In his older years, he was
described as being five foot ten inches tall, one hundred and forty pounds,
and contrary to popular belief, he did not have dark hair. He had
ash blonde hair, which is what Wyatt Earp described him ask and Virgil Earp's
wife, who was Wyatt's brother. His wife Ali described him as having platinum
blonde, which was pretty cool. Little fact I didn't know. He did
sport that very thick famous mustache. Most historians agree that the reason that he
did sport that mustache is because of you know, to hide the scar from
his cleft lip. So there was that a little bit about his family.
His father was Henry Burrows Holiday. He was born in South Carolina. Now
his dad probably had every fucking job under the sun. He was a businessman.
He was a clerk of the county court. He was a pharmacist,
a lawyer. He was a sycamore tree planner who had like a tree nursery
as well. He was responsible for introducing the pekin industry to Georgia. He
could participated in the Cherokee Indian War in eighteen thirty eight. He was promoted
to a major in the Mexican War in eighteen forty six. When he did
return for the Mexican War, though he actually adopted and brought home a young
Mexican boy who had been orphaned by the war. His name was Francisco Hidalgo.
Now Francisco is credited with teaching Doc how to use guns and knives at
a very young age. Like, for those of you who don't know,
Doc Holliday was very good with a set of knives. Francisco. You know,
there's not much known about his history before Georgia, or even after Georgia
for that matter. But he ended up dying of tuberculosis in eighteen sixty six,
and then his father after that ended up serving in the Civil War.
In eighteen sixty one, he was a major in the twenty seventh Georgia Infantry
and then after that he went on to be mayor of Valdosta, Georgia for
two terms. I did read in a couple of places that he had served
several back to back terms. The only thing that I could find in that
most historians can also find is just two terms, one from eighteen seventy two
to eighteen seventy three, the other one from eighteen seventy six to eighteen seventy
seven. His mother was Alice Jane McKee. She was also born in South
Carolina. She was, you know, her family were from Scotland. Now,
like I had mentioned previously, she was very very protective. She was
giving him speech therapy. She helped him, you know, learn how to
talk. She was very very adamant about that. And she had taught him
piano from the time he could reach the keys, which is seriously cool.
They were all about being, you know, Southern gentleman. But Doc was
a pretty hot tempered dude. I mean, you're gonna find out here,
you know, we're going to separate the fact from fiction. Don't get me
wrong, but Doc had a little bit of a temper on him. By
eighteen sixty four, the family is moving around a lot, mostly because of
Sherman's March to the Sea. While General Sherman is marching his troops through Georgia
to the east, the holiday families trying to avoid being in the path and
basically getting their ship burned down and pillaged. Because that's pretty much what Sherman's
men did. I'm actually pretty knowledgeable about Sherman's March to the Sea because I
personally have an ancestor, my great great great grandfather on my father's side,
served in the Civil War and was with Sherman on his march to the Sea.
So, you know, it's really interesting if you get looking into that
kind of thing. But like I said, that's on a whole other tangent.
They ended up in Bamis, Georgia. I don't know if it's Bemis
or Bamis, which is about seven miles outside of Valdosta. Now, they
ended up up settling in Valdosta on some land that was given to Henry Holiday
for his part serving in the Civil War, and this would be in right
around in eighteen sixty four. Now, shortly after they get to Valdosta,
his mom, Alice, starts showing symptoms and she starts losing weight, starts
having night fevers, a lot of coughing, and come to find out,
ended up being a consumption also known as tuberculosis. For those of you,
I know, I've talked about consumption before, and I know a lot of
people outside of the US aren't familiar with it consumption was tuberculosis, and basically
it was called consumption because you know, originally they had thought that it consumed
the body from within. Here's a fact for you. One out of every
five deaths in the USA from the year eighteen hundred to eighteen seventy was because
of tuberculosis. Now, some of the stages. There were three stages.
The one stage. The first one was you kind of had like a dry
cough, you know, you had a pain in the chest and shoulders,
and you would lose a little bit of weight. The second stage was coughing
up mucus and sometimes blood. And the third stage was you would literally just
be wrecked by this disease. I mean you would get skeleton skinny, and
it seriously was a slow and very painful death. Now, you know,
she ended up dying on September sixteenth, eighteen sixty six. But the whole
two years that she's dying of this, John is taking care of her.
That's a hell of a thing for a thirteen fourteen, fifteen year old boy
to go through. He was literally an only child. His mother took care
of him. You know, it's just really really sad, To be perfectly
honest, with you now. While his mom is dying, and even shortly
after her death, he did to have a lot of family around. He
had huge family. Like I had said, they're very notable. They were.
Most of them were within about the fifty mile range. One place he
would often go is his uncle John's house, his uncle John styles holiday.
Now, while he was over there, there was a woman named Sophie Walton.
She was a young mulatto woman. She was the retainer of the household.
I'm not gonna lie to you. Retainer of the household is pretty much
a fancy word for a fucking slave. So she's over there and she would
always look out, you know, watch the kids play with them and stuff
like that. And she is credited with being the person who taught Doc how
to play cards. She taught a lot of games, but Sophie taught young
John and all of his cousins this game called Skinning. Now, the original
rules of this card game, Skinning were pretty much adapted by Pharaoh. As
you go to listen on, you know, you'll come to find out that
Pharaoh is a very prominent card game. Later on in Doc's life, like
I had mentioned, on September sixteenth, eighteen sixty six, when Doc was
fifteen. His mom does die. When this happens, Doc just starts.
He throws himself into school. He needs something to do to take his mind
off. He took care of her for two years while she was dying.
He watched her die. So he starts going to school, starts, you
know, doing that because before he was homeschooled by his mom. But on
December eighteenth, just a few months after his mom dies, his dad,
Henry remarries a woman named Rachel Martin. She was the daughter of a judge
who was the neighbor. She was very young, she was only a few
years older than Doc. Now, this pissed Doc off, and it could
have possibly strained the relationship between him and his father going forward. It was
tradition to have like a one year grieving period. Oh, Henry was right
back in the saddle. He didn't really waste any time, you know.
And like I said, like Doc saw this as like disrespect to his mom.
So it really strained their relationship. So now he even does anything to
try to get away from the house as much as he can, and he
starts going to school at a place called the Valdosta institute and what he learned
there were, you know, subjects like rhetoric, grammar, history, math.
Doc was said to be a very very good at math. He was
very good with the numbers. But he also learned languages. He could speak
Latin, French, in Ancient Greek. All his peers said he was an
extremely bright guy, and he excelled at school. He is super smart.
Now, in eighteen seventy, when Doc was nineteen, he goes to the
dental school in Philadelphia. So on March first, eighteen seventy two, Doc,
at the age of twenty becomes a doctor of dental surgery. And he
actually wrote his thesis on diseases of the teeth, and he gets a degree
from the Pennsylvania College of Dental Surgery, which is currently known as you know,
the University of Pennsylvania School of Dental Medicine. It's like a little department
of that. He actually graduated five months before his twenty first birthday, so
the school held his degree. You weren't allowed to practice dentistry until you were
twenty one. So, like I had said, Doc was a pretty smart
guy. And I mean, don't get me wrong, not gonna lie.
Probably didn't take much to be a dentist back in the mid to late eighteen
hundreds. But still, I'm not going to take anything away from him because
literally everybody that had anything to say about him being in school said he was
exceptionally bright. So what he's doing while he's waiting for his degree is he
goes to Saint Louis, Missouri, and he becomes an assistant for a classmate
that he had by the name of A Jamison Fuchias Junior. I don't know
if his last name is Fuchias or Fuchs. It's fuc h e s.
But you know, obviously there's no pronunciations on that, so I'll just say
it all different ways so I don't fuck anybody over on their name, you
know. So the end of July eighteen seventy two, he ends up going
to Atlanta and he joins the dental practice of Arthur C. Ford, and
he's pretty much waiting until he turns twenty one so he can open up his
own practice. What he's doing is he's waiting and he's trying to gain clientele
while working with Arthur Ford. He's also living with his uncle and his family
right there, so you know, it's kind of a nice little situation he's
got. Now, Arthur c. Ford ends up going to a meeting out
of town and reports that Doc is going to sub in his place. In
the Atlanta Constitution. On July twenty six, eighteen seventy two, he pretty
much ran the following thing. Quote, I hereby inform my patients that I
have to attend the session of the Southern Dental Association in Richmond, Virginia,
and will be absent until about the middle of August, during which time doctor
John h. Holiday will fill my place in my office, twenty six Whitehall
Street, Arthur c fourd DDA end quote. Now around this time, there
are a couple significant events that happened, one of which not much Unlike Jesse
James, Doc Holliday was more than likely a cousin fucker as well. You
know, this wasn't uncommon. It was kind of acceptable in the you know,
nineteenth century. It is what it is. It's kind of fucked up,
but it's whatever. Like it happened because you know, to keep property
within the family and money within the family and shit like that. I mean,
look at royalty in Europe. I mean they were literally fucking their own
cousins all the time and shit. So, but he supposedly had a little
bit of a romance with in his teens with his cousin Martha Anne Holiday.
She was known as Maddie. She was the daughter of his uncle, Robert
Kennedy Holiday. Now apparently this little romance sparks up again. Now the family
even today will acknowledge that there was more than likely some sort of romance there.
You know, some historians will argue that it was just a really good
friendship. I'm kind of gonna go with the family on that one, because
if the family's going to go ahead and admit this, it's probably fucking true.
All right. So they ended up having like a pretty good love affair
from all my understanding, kind of creeped out saying that. But a little
bit about Maddie, you know, after Doc ends up leaving, which we'll
get to here in a minute, she joined a convent. She joined the
Order of the Sisters of Mercy. She became Sister Mary Melanie. A little
cool thing about her was she was the inspiration for Miss Melanie and Gone with
the Wind. Philip Fitzgerald, okay, which was an uncle in law of
Robert Kennedy Holiday. He was the great grandfather of Margaret Mitchell, who wrote
Gone with the Wind. Of the eight children born to Robert Kennedy Holiday and
his wife, one was Martha and Maddie Holiday, which was sister Mary Melanie,
so miss Melanie ties in. But yeah, that's kind of a cool
little fact. Their romance was. It was it was not looked at very
highly in their family because Maddie was Catholic and one of the rules of I
should you not. I can't even make this up. One of the rules
of the Catholic families at this time was that you could not marry in the
first degree. And what that meant was you can't marry a first cousin.
You can't have kids with a first cousin. You were allowed to marry and
have kids in the second and third degree, which was which meant you know,
you could you can fuck all the second and third cousins you want,
like that's no big deal, but not a first cousin. That's strictly forbidden.
So their family was very, very against their relationship and it did strain
it supposedly from all I understood now, I will say this doc would always
speak so highly of Maddie. I know it's fucked up that you know it's
his first cousin, but this was truly the woman that he loved and he
would always love until the day he died. She ended up dying in nineteen
thirty nine in the convent, and they kept correspondence letters. They corresponded like
the entire life up until his death. As a matter of fact, like
when he died, she was the person that they contacted to inform the rest
of the family. And when she ended up dying, she had previously destroyed
like a lot of the letters after Doc died because she didn't want to ruin
his reputation or make the world think differently of him, because he did have
a reputation by the time he died. He had a crazy ass reputation,
as you're going to come to find out. But you know, after Maddie
ended up dying, her younger sister actually got the rest of the letters and
burned those two. She burned everything. She did keep the personal effects because
after Doc died, she Maddie was the one who got sent all his personal
effects along with the other half of the correspondence letters. So when Maddie ended
up dying, her younger sister literally destroyed all the fucking letters. And it
is stated by family even today that the reason she did that was because if
the world had read those letters, they would have known a different Doc Holiday.
So it is really interesting to know what was in those letters, you
know what I mean. But you know, that's how it goes. Sometimes
that's history, you know, it's solid speculation. Now there is another incident
that happens around this area that is still kind of debated. I like to
believe the family's version of this, and not just because it's the better version,
because it's the one that makes more sense. Basically, it's referred to
as the swimming hole incident. Now, one version of the story goes,
and this version comes from bat Masterson. Okay, Now, bat Masterson was
a famous lawman, just like Wyat eerb bat Masterson wrote a bunch of articles,
did interviews, you know, wrote a bunch of memoirs in nineteen oh
seven where he talks about Doc Holiday and he talks about this incident. But
it should be known that bat Masterson was not a big fan of Doc Holiday.
He pretty much tolerated him because he was best friends with Wyat eerb and
we'll get to that story of how that all happened here in a little bit
too. But he's not a big fan. He talks very badly about Doc
Holliday a lot. So it's hard to take into consideration, you know the
fact that somebody who has so much contempt for you writing about you, Yeah,
they're probably going to stretch the truth. I mean, bad Masterson was
known for stretching the truth anyway about himself, let alone Doc Holliday. So
his version of the story is that Doc had told him okay, and Doc
was known to embellish, not gonna lie. Doc was known to embellish,
but he told him that. You know, right around this time period,
him and some buddies went down to their favorite swimming hole and there was a
group of African Americans. They're swimming in their spot. Well, Doc Holliday
confronted them and said, hey, you know, why don't you guys get
the hell out of here? And then one of them snapped back and said,
this river's wide enough, why don't you go somewhere else. Now,
you got to remember, you know, this is after the Civil War.
There's still a lot of tension right there. So Doc Holliday says, I'm
going to get my gun. You guys better be gone when I get back.
So he goes, comes back double barreled shotgun, and supposedly he had
he kind of got them to where they were in a group together and fired
off rounds out of the double barreled killing anywhere from one to three of them.
This, unfortunately, more than likely did not happen. The actual story
from family members and also other contemporaries is that he was down there with his
uncle and they were swimming and they did have, you know, a little
situation with some African Americans down there swimming in their spot. So his uncle
hands him an eighteen fifty one Cult revolver, which ended up being a gun
that Doc Holliday ended up keeping. His uncle told him, you know,
fire above their heads, just scare him. And when he did that,
you know, supposedly one of them shot back, but they did leave and
then that was the end of the situation. You know, it's hard telling.
There were no newspaper accounts of this ever even happening. Even if he
would have killed somebody, I'm not saying that because it was after the Civil
War, because they were African Americans that it wouldn't have been reported on,
but it's hard telling what happened right there. Personally, I believe the family
side of the story just because it's more specific. It makes more sense,
and that eighteen fifty one cult revolver is something that Doc did end up carrying
until about the late eighteen seventies. That was his gun of choice. So
now by eighteen seventy three, Doc does have a successful practice only for a
couple months. Doc finds out that he has tuberculosis. He starts showing the
symptoms. He more than likely got it from his mom when he was taking
care of her when she was dying. He goes and gets several opinions,
and all of them said the same exact thing. At the age of twenty
two years years old, John Henry Holiday is given no more than six months
to live. Now, they said, if he goes and he moves to
a drier climate, he could possibly extend his life by about two years max.
So in September in eighteen seventy three, Doc, at the age of
twenty two, leaves for Dallas. Now this is when Maddie Holiday goes and
joins the convent. Some people say that she would never love another man,
so she decides to never, you know, engage with another man. Some
other contemporaries think that her family was ashamed of the affair that she had with
her first cousin, so they forced her into the convent. I personally don't
believe that, because even though this was the eighteen hundreds, you were still
pretty much allowed to make your own decisions in your early twenties. And I
mean, don't get me wrong. They came from a prominent family who probably
did tell their kids what to do and they followed suit. But anyway you
look at it, this is when Maddie joins a convent and Doc leaves for
Dallas. And the reason he goes to Dallas is because that was literally,
at this time, the end of the fucking railroad to the South, and
Dallas was like the last civilized part of the American West before you start getting
into the untamed frontier part of it. So he heads there. He opens
up a dental practice with a friend of his dad's name, John A seeger
Doc Holliday, who's actually not known as Dick until about eighteen seventy eight,
but John Henry Holiday, he was a fucking really good dentist man like.
He won awards for dental work at the annual Fair of the North Texas Agricultural,
Mechanical and Bloodstock Association. At the Dallas County Fair, he won prizes
for best set of artificial teeth in dentalware and also an award for best gold
teeth, Like can you imagine Doc Holidays out there making gold grills? Man?
I don't know why, but I think that's just pretty cool. He
also won an award for best teeth and Vulcanized Rubber, which isn't at all
what it sounds like now. The prizes for these were a nice plate and
five dollars for each display, which eighteen seventy three man that what really wasn't
that bad? But moving forward. On March second, eighteen seventy four,
the Dallas Daily Commercial reported quote, upon mutual consent, the firm of Seeger
and Holliday has dissolved. JH. Holliday will be responsible for the two debts
against the firm. JA Seegar will remain at the old office over Cochrane's drug
Store, Elm Street. JH. Holliday's office is over the Dallas County Bank
corner of Maine and Lamar Street end quote. Pretty much what was going on
was their business started falling through. Like he was losing a lot of clientele.
He was coughing at the wrong times because he had just found out he
had tuberculosis, not you know, long before this, you know, he'd
be doing feelings and extractions and be coughing on people. So, like,
his business gradually declined because people were fucking freaked out. They didn't want to
get consumption or TV. So he started losing, you know, a lot
of his clientele. It is around this time that Doc starts turning to gambling.
He starts going into the nightlife. Now, since he was taught that
card game when he was a kid. The popular game at the time was
Pharaoh. So he's going around gambling and he's really good with numbers because he
was very good at math, and he's very good at shuffling cards and just
card games and gambling in general. So he starts leaning towards this for his
main means of support, to support himself because he has really nothing else now.
Because of this, he also starts honing his skills with the knives and
the guns he had to protect himself as a gambler in the West, not
only because he was sick, but he was also small and weak. You
know, he wasn't a very big dude, hundred and thirty pounds at about
this time, and you know, the West was a rough place for a
guy who leaned on gambling as a profession. So he starts getting really really
efficient with the guns and knives, and his pistol of choice at this time
was a nickel plated Colt Revolver double action self cocker, and it was a
thirty eight caliber Lightning with a three and a half inch barrel. He would
later go on to have a forty one caliber Thunderer made by Colt as well.
But the reason that he chose the Lightning with the three and a half
inch barrel and thirty eight caliber was because it was a lighter pistol. It
had a shorter barrel, it had a smaller grip, It was a lot
more easy to maneuver for him, for a guy with a smaller frame who
was kind of weak, So it just kind of fit really really perfect.
Now. The first time Doc runs into a little bit of trouble was in
late eighteen seventy four. He is indicted with twelve others on gambling charges,
but not only that. On January second, eighteen seventy five, not long
after the indictment for gambling charges, Holiday and a local saloon keeper in the
area named Champagne Charlie Austin, they had a little bit of a disagreement over
a card game. At the time, Doc was living in Dennis in Texas.
The Dallas newspaper when they reported it, they really didn't think it was
that big of a deal. But how it went down was both men pulled
their pistols. There was a lot of shots fired, not one's truck,
anybody. I mean, there's lots of shots fired. Doc could actually shoot
extremely fast because that pistol that I had mentioned was being a self cocker.
You didn't have to cock it, you know, in order to fire a
shot, which was most of the pistols in the wild West. You could
just pull the trigger repeatedly and it would just go off, you know,
just bam bam, bam bam, super fast. So there's all these shots
fired. Nobody got shot, not one person that was wounded. Both people
were arrested. Doc has brought up on shooting charges and he is eventually found
not guilty of shooting with intent to kill by a jury, but he was
found guilty and find in the gambling charges. Not too long after that,
riding about spring of eighteen seventy five, Holiday supposedly shot and killed a prominent
citizen and had to flee back to Dallas. Now there's no newspaper account of
this ever happening. There's no death records, there's no court records, there's
absolutely nothing. So a lot of people believe that this did not happen.
Is you're gonna come to find out, Doc Holliday. In order to kind
of protect himself, he would tell a lot of tall tales. He would
his reputation would hit a town before he did, and people did not fuck
with him. You're gonna come to find out. Like when people found out
that his name was Doc Holliday, they did not want anything to do with
him. All he had to do is say his name and that was it.
And he did that as a means of protection, not to make him
self. Sounds so much better, but he did it because he knew he
was weaker than most people, like he had to do something. This was
his only means of living was gambling, So you know, when he's in
at these gaming tables with all these big ass dudes who literally killed people at
the drop of a hat. Doc Holliday had to have something. He had
a reputation. Now, in June eighteen seventy five, he does make it
to Fort Griffin, Texas. Holiday was indicted by a grand jury for gaming
in a saloon and there was a warrant issued for his arrest. He hurries
up in Skips Town. That's about the last we hear of him until sometime
in eighteen seventy six he stops in Jacksboro, Texas. By this time he
had gained a reputation as being known as the Deadly dentist, and that was
partly because of his own stories and rumors and stuff like that that he was
spreading about himself. Now in Jacksborough, he supposedly kind of enhanced that reputation
with three supposed gunfights. His tally at this point in time, which is
accepted by a lot of people, was, you know, one gambler dead,
two gamblers wounded, and one six cavalry men dead. There are no
news paper accounts, court records, no army records that mentioned any kind of
this shit, but bat Masterson does report at one point in time later on
that Holiday was in Jacksboro to South Carolina and he got into a gunfight with
an unnamed soldier and Holiday supposedly shot and killed him. Oddly enough, there
was a historian named Gary L. Roberts that did find a record for a
guy who was known as Private Robert Smith who had been shot and killed by
an unknown assailant. But Holiday was never linked to the death. So that's
pretty you know, that's give or take. I'm not sure how I feel
about that being fact, but it's pretty interesting that this that this historian did
track that info down. Now, still in eighteen seventy six, he goes
to Denver, Colorado. He uses the alias Tom Mackie at this point,
and that's kind of a spin on his mother's maiden names McKee. That brings
up a lot of questions. If he was just running away from gambling charges,
why would he have to change his name, you know, So that
does lend a little bit of credit to the fact that he possibly did kill
like at least one or two people around that time beforehand, because nobody's going
to change their name to escape gambling charges. It was literally a fine,
and you're gonna come to find out, Doc Holliday gets arrested and fined for
gambling a lot, but he ends up getting a job as a pharaoh dealer
at John A. Bab's theater. Comique or comic. It's spelled c O
M I que. I'm not sure how to pronounce it. Right Around this
time, too, he supposedly gets into a knife fight and kills a guy
named Bud Ryan. There's two versions. Either he gets in a knife fight
basically just cuts up Bud's face and neck real bad, scarring him for life.
Another story says that he got into a knife fight with Bud Ryan and
killed him. You know, there are no records for this. Karen Holiday
Tanner, this is one book that I leaned on a lot for research.
She wrote a book called Doc Holiday. A family affair, I believe is
what it's called. She goes on to say, you know, that event
never happened. It was fabricated by a journalist who wrote for the Denver Republican
after Doc's death. The false story appeared around Christmas of the year of Doc's
death. Karen Holiday Tanner also notes again that bat Masterson would always readily perpetuate
and fabricate stories to make Doc look more negative, look more like a bad
person, and he did this quite often. But in the article in the
Denver Republican of June twenty, eighteen eighty seven, it does to hell of
a young kid named Ryan who slashed the neck of a guy named Jack Brogan
in a saloon called Moses's Home. So there was a slashing in Denver at
this point in time, but it was much later on after Doc had died.
Ryan was actually the slasher, and Holiday supposedly wasn't even involved or present
at the time, so there is that information. On February fifth, eighteen
seventy six, after gold is discovered in Wyoming, Doc heads there. He
settles in Cheyenne. He starts dealing Pharaoh in a place called Bella Union Saloon,
which is owned by a guy named Thomas Miller. Now, after more
gold is discovered in the Deadwood, which is part of the Dakota territory at
this time, he ends up moving that saloon to Deadwood. Doc goes with
him and he pretty much just spends the winner playing poker and dealing Pharaoh.
It is stated that Wyat Eerb is in Deadwood at this same time, but
this is not where they actually cross passing meat yet. Going on from there,
in early eighteen seventy seven, Doc goes back to Cheyenne. There is
legends out there that say he killed three unidentified men before ending his visit.
No evidence that he killed anyone in Wyoming. Then he goes back to Denver,
goes back to Kansas to visit an aunt of his, Then he goes
back to Dennis in Texas, and then back to Breckinridge, Texas. And
this is all about the span of about six months or so. The next
time we see him pop up is on July fourth, eighteen seventy seven.
In Breckinridge, he gets into a fight with a guy named Henry Kahn over
a card game. And Doc was known to carry around a walking stick because
you know, he's kind of frailing week at times, so apparently because of
this card game in this argument, Doc uses his walking stick to beat the
ever living shit out of this guy named Henry Cohn. I mean, he
severely beat him. Both of them were arrested and fined for gambling. As
irony would have it, the end of the fight, that wasn't really it.
Later that day, Henry khn shows back up and shoots Doc and seriously
injures him. As a matter of fact, in the July seventh Dallas Weekly
Herald newspaper, they reported him as being dead. So Doc Holliday actually got
to read an article about himself being dead. So that's pretty interesting. But
one of his cousins by the name of George Henry Holliday actually moved down there
from Georgia to help him recover. Once he did recover fully, he goes
to Fort Griffin, Texas and starts dealing cards at a saloon by a guy
named John Chancey. Now this is where he meets big nosed Kate, who
is a dancehall girl and occasional prostitute. And for all you sensitives out there
who think prostitute is a derogatory term, I could be historically accurate right now
and refer to her as a whore like I read in every single historical reference
I read about her. But I'm actually being quite generous right now. But
she was an occasional prostitute. She was only occasional prostitute because she viewed herself
as more of an independent woman. She didn't want to belong to like a
house brothel. She didn't really want to pimp, and she didn't want to
get married and belonged to any man, so she just kind of did her
own shit. A little bit about her was she was christened Mary Catherine Heroni,
also known as Kate Fisher, also known as Kate Elder. She was
the daughter of a Hungarian doctor. She actually ran away from home when she
was sixteen because she was escaping a sexual abuse from an unnamed male relative.
People who who wanted to talk down about Kate, they did refer to her
his big nose Kate. She did have like a Roman nose or a hook
nose, if you know what those are, but it wasn't really particularly large
or prominent by really any standards. Basically how it all worked out, this
was, you know, the feature that did earn her the name. But
Ali Rp, who was the wife of Virgil Earp, who was why it's
a brother, claimed that, you know, this is why they called her
big nosed Kate. Now, Kate herself never used that name, Doc never
called her that. The Earp family called her that because her in the Earp
family did not get along very well. So there's actually a lot of argument
about whether or not she even had a big nose or not, and whether
or not she was another woman who was referred to his big nose Kate because
she was always sticking her nose into other people's business. Because there's two separate
pictures who have been associated with big nosed Kate, people get the two pictures
confused. One of them's right, one of them's wrong. But I'm gonna
lean more towards the Earp family, you know, just because they really don't
have anything to gain or lose from this, and they probably know better than
anybody else because they actually knew her. So she was described as being tough,
stubborn, and fearless. She was actually very educated. She was a
very smart woman, and like I had said, she chose to be a
prosecute because she liked her independence. And she is the only woman who Doc
Holliday is known to have had a relationship. I mean, she was pretty
much his common law wife. She was referred to. They actually when they
would check into boarding houses, they would be you know, they would sign
in as mister and missus Doc Holliday so or John Henry Holiday. So.
Don't get me wrong. They had some fights they had a very tumultuous relationship.
But you know, the simple fact of the matter is Doc was even
quoted as saying, you know that she was his intellectual equal because she was
so well educated, and Doc was super educated as well. So I thought
that was pretty cool, all right. Now, moving forward to about October
of eighteen seventy seven, outlawed Dirty Dave Ruta Ball, who got the nickname
Dirty Dave because he refused to bathe. He robs a Santa Fe railroad construction
camp, and he was fleeing south. A guy named Wyatt Earp, who
was given a temporary commission as Deputy US Marshall, left Dodge City following route
Ball over four hundred miles, which was six hundred and forty kilometers, and
he ends up tracking him all the way to Fort Griffin. So Earp goes
into a place called the Beehive Saloon, which is the largest in town in
its owned by John Chancey. So John Chancey and Herb had been friends since
they were younger. They had been friends a long time. And he goes
in and asked Chancey. You know, He's like, hey, like,
I'm tracked this guy to here. Have you seen him you know, I
need info on him. I'm tracking him. And Chancey tells why at Earp
that Dave Rutaball had passed through town earlier in the week and that he did
not know where he was headed, and Chancey suggested that he asked this gambler
named John Henry Holiday. Holiday had played cards with Ruta Ball earlier in the
week, and Wyatt was pretty skeptical about talking to Doc Holiday. It was
very well known that Doc hated lawman, so you know, he finds them
later that evening at Chancey's and he was actually surprised at Doc's willingness to talk
to him. And Doc was actually quoted as saying about dirty Dave Ruta Ball.
Dirty Dave is an ignorant scoundrel. I disapprove of of his very existence.
I considered ending it myself on several occasions, but self control got the
better of me. Holiday pretty much tells wide Earth that Ruta Ball was more
than likely headed back to Kansas. Now, this is the very first time
that Doc and wide Earp do meet. Their relationship at this point is more
of a relationship of necessity. You know, they're not really friends. Doc
Holiday hated Dirty day of Ruta Ball a little bit more the lawmen, so
you know, wide Earp was cool with the information. So while in Fort
Griffin, Holiday's killer legend also has him claiming another victim. At about this
time. A story goes that while playing poker, guy named Ed Bailey kept
sifting through the discards, which was highly illegal in the game of Pharaoh.
Holiday warned him a couple of times, but Bailey pretty much ignored him,
kept doing it just to piss him off. So the next time Bailey did
it, Holiday just packed up the pot, put his cards down without showing
his hand, scooped up all the money without saying a word, which was
pretty much the rules. That's how it worked. If somebody started looking at
the discarded cards, so Bailey pulls out a revolver, but Holiday whipped out
his knife, went to work, slashed him across the stomach. You know,
blood spills out everywhere. Bailey falls across the table didn't even get a
shot off. Doc didn't run because it was self defense and he knew that
now. The dead gambler apparently had some friends, and when Holiday was arrested,
he was arrested. He was put in jail. A lynch mob begins
to form. Now, while Holidays in jail, the moms outside and they're
doing their thing, talking about what's going to happen. What happens is big
nose. Kate supposedly sets fire to a barn or a shed and holding a
gun to a jailer. The burning building pretty much just drafted all the mob.
Then Kate slipped into the jail, pulls out two six shooters, points
him at the jailer. She already had horses waiting outside, and her and
Doc Holliday rode off to Dodge City, Kansas and got the fuck out of
town. Now, this is a really, really cool story, but it's
probably only partly true. There's no newspaper articles or court records of any of
this shit ever happening, except for the fact that Holiday had been arrested for
illegal gaming again, not for killing a guy named Ed Bailey, and he
wasn't locked in a jail. The town didn't even have a jail at the
time. He was under like a form of house arrest. He was being
held in a hotel room under guard. Now, Kate really did set fire
to a shed behind the hotel as a diversion, and did fre dock so
that part is true, which is that's a ride or die chick right there.
Man, That is awesome. So they literally got out of town.
They go to Dodge City. While in Dodge City they register at Deacon Cox's
boarding house as doctor and missus John H. Holiday, and there just happens
to be no dentist in town. So Doc kinda hangs out the sign and
he's like, you know, in eighteen seventy eight, he puts out an
ad in the paper and it just says dentistry John H. Holiday, Dentist
very respectfully offers his professional services to the citizens of Dodge City and surrounding county
during the summer office at Room number twenty four Dodge House, where satisfaction is
not given money will be refunded. So he's actually trying to start open another
business, trying to kinda go straight make a legitimate living. You know,
he's pretty much got Kate under his name, so they're trying to be like
respectable citizens, even though he's already got this crazy ass reputation anyway, So
on September twenty fourth, eighteen seventy eight. Now this is according to a
book called I Married Wider by a guy named Glenn Boyer. What happened was
early in eighteen seventy eight, RB had run off a couple of cowboys by
the name of Toby Driscoll and Ed Morrison out of Wichita, Kansas Now on
September twenty fourth, eighteen seventy eight. The two cowboys, they had supposedly
a couple dozen men with them. They ride into Dodge. They shot up
the town. They're galloping up and down front Street and they walk into the
Long Branch Saloon. They vandalized the place. They started harassing a bunch of
customers. So Wyatterer, here's the commotion. He burst through the front door,
and you know, before he could react, there's twenty cowboys standing there
pointing their guns at him. You know, that's one verse. Another version
is there were only three to five cowboys, but either way, he was
outnumbered. In both versions of the story. Doc Holiday was sitting in the
back room playing cards and he starts hearing the commotion going on, and he
had recognized, you know, wyat Earp from when they had met before.
So what he does is he creeps up behind the gang's leader, which was
Ed Morrison, and he pulls out his pistol, puts it to Morrison's head,
tells him to disarm. He tells all the guys to disarm. Now,
supposedly one of the men decided to try to be a quick trigger,
pulls out a gun, Doc shot him without a hesitation and pretty much saved
wyat Earp's life. You know, there's no technical account of any such confrontation
being reported by any kind of Dodge City newspapers, so it's it's hard telling
if that part of the story happened. There's another little side story that says,
you know, whyatt was arresting three cowboys, one of whom was trying
to pull an out of sight pistol, one that was hidden like behind him
and his in his belt, and Holiday jumped up from a nearby poker table
and cocked the pistol, put it to his head, and the dude dropped
his pistol and either way saved why it's life. Now, either way you
know that happened, We're not one hundred percent sure, but whatever did happen,
he did draw his pistol and fended off any kind of attackers. That
why it would have had and you know this incident may have been why Earp,
you know, would always later praise Doc's speed and adeptness with a gun.
He would always say, He's, like, dude, that guy is
the fastest draw man. He's good with a pistol. And I don't think
somebody like whyat Earp would say that just to say that because of his own
reputation, But either way you look at it. Whya Earb credited Holiday was
saving his life that day, and that seamented their friendship right there forever and
okay, corral in quest in eighteen eighty one, wide Earp actually said,
I am a friend of Doc Holliday because when I was a city marshal of
Dodge City, Kansas, he came to my rescue and saved my life when
I was surrounded by desperadoes. So I mean, it's it's a definite fact
that Doc Holliday did save wide Earp's life. And because of their friendship,
Doc starts associating himself with these lawmen, you know, White Earp and Bat
Masterson, and he actually helps them on several occasions, and he helps them
and they help Doc, you know, so they help him get out of
trouble every now and then. It's kind of a fair thing. So it's
not totally out of the realm of possibilities to dismiss that Doc Holliday was this
good with a pistol Right around this time as well, Big knows Kate,
she kind of starts getting bored. Unfortunately, she starts going back to the
saloons and dancing. Doc was pretty pissed off about this because she's still carrying
around the name missus John Holiday, and she's out here, you know,
trying to be a show girl and kind of hurt him. You know,
it hurt his pride a little bit. He really didn't want to practice dentistry
anymore, you know, so like he's at a little bit of a turning
point, you know, so he took down, you know, as dental
cherry did. He didn't do that anymore. Kate ended up leaving him.
She took off for parts unknown. Nobody knows where she went for a while,
and Doc himself actually took off too. He ended up going for Leadville,
which was in the Colorado Territory at the time. Now here's a couple
more stories. On his way to Colorado Territory, Holiday is said to have
become involved in an argument with two gamblers an argument that he won by killing
both men. Once in Trinidad, Colorado Territory, he supposedly got into a
gunfight with another gunman named Kid Colton. You know, the story has Doc
shooting Colton, just straight up dead, so he's got another notch on his
gun. But again, there's no newspaper account or court records. Nobody else
mentioned these two incidents. You know, not to argue that fact, because
that is a good fact, because I do work on facts. I work
on documented evidence. But again, we have to think this is the late
nineteenth century in the West. If two men are out in the middle of
nowhere and one shoots another one, there's no newspaper that's going to report it.
There's no court document that's ever gonna show it. Dude's gonna lay out
there dead and he's gonna decompose, and nobody's ever going to know except for
the other guy. So I absolutely fucking hate it when they discredit a lot
of these stories based on that phrase right there, because they do that shit
all the time. I always say, there's no court documents, you know,
there's no newspaper articles. Yeah, that's cool, But when you're on
the side of a fucking mountain. There's not a newspaper office there, So
you as a listener just kinda got to keep that in mind. There's two
ways to think about that. While Doc is leaving Colorado, he's on his
way to Las Vegas and New Mexico territory. In eighteen seventy nine Holiday,
which you know, according to legend, killed some more people. He was
at a railroad construction camp called O'taro. Doc is said to have killed another
person who pretty much he just left out there to decompose. Like I said,
all historians say, there's no record, no evidence whatsoever such an event.
It could have happened, it could not have happened. We don't know.
There's only one person who knows whether or not it happened. So a
little bit before Christmas in eighteen seventy eight Holiday and Big Nose Kate they are
back together. They both arrived in Las Vegas, New Mexico. There are
supposedly twenty two hot springs near the town that were said to have favored individuals
with tuberculosis. They had alleged healing properties, so a lot of people with
tuberculosis would go there. They would bathe in the hot springs, and it
was supposedly supposed to extend their lives, you know, as we know now,
it was almost exactly the opposite. Probably didn't help him too much.
But there is another alleged victim of Dic Holliday in Las Vegas at this time.
His name is Charlie White. Holiday had run White, who's a bartender,
out of dodge and told him that if he ever saw him again,
he would kill him. Well, Holiday sees White again, and he's attending
bar at the Plaza Hotel saloon in Las Vegas's Old Town, and a guy
named Miguel Antonio Otero. He ended up later becoming the governor of New Mexico.
But Miguel told the story because he was witnessed to it, and he
straight up says that, you know, the two men faced each other,
began shooting. They shoot and shoot with no one scoring a hit. Finally,
Charlie White is down. What happened was, you know, they had
had an argument previously. Doc straight up told him, if I ever see
you again, I'm gonna kill you. So he sees him in the saloon,
he leaves to go get his gun, comes back. Doc Holliday literally
just starts shooting blindly over the bar, and what he does is he shoots
White in the head, but it wasn't a full shot. It actually just
grazed his skull a little bit, So it really is just stunned. White
didn't really, you know, do too much damage. There isn't again his
story in say, there is no newspaper account or court records were found to
verify such a gunfight ever took place. But here's a deal. You have
an eyewitness who later became governor who says, yeah, I saw the whole
damn thing happen, like this is how it happened. So I mean,
you can kind of take that as you will. Now. While they did
get in the New Mexico Territory, Doc opened a dental practice again and continued
gambling as well. The winter was really unseasonably cold that year, business was
really slow, and luck would have it that the New Mexico Territorial Legislature passed
to bill banning gambling within the territory, and Doc said, fuck this,
I'm about done, And in March eighth, eighteen seventy nine, Holiday was
indicted again for keeping a gaming table. He was fine twenty five dollars.
The ban combined with the ban on gambling, the fine he keeps getting indicted
on gambling charges. You got extreme low temperatures pretty much persuades him to return
to Dodge City for just a few months. So on July twentieth, eighteen
seventy nine, there's a lot of accounts of Doc Holliday killing a man named
Mike Gordon. A coroner's end quest held the day that Gordon was killed,
they made no mention of Doc Holliday. Was ruled that the fatal gunshot wound
to Gordon's chest was inflicted by some person unknown to that jury. The newspaper
at the time expanded on the killings for days without a single mention of Holiday,
who actually at this time had his own saloon. He had bought his
own saloon on a center street. Again, we bring up bat Masterson,
who adds to it. He pretty much gave it. He gave an interview
to the Arizona Weekly Citizen on August fourteenth, eighteen eighty six. He was
the one who named Holiday as Gordon's killer, and even threw in a Mexican
that Doc was supposed to have shot. When the Mexican was pissed about Doc
shooting Gordon. So basically bat Masterson says towards the end of Doc's life and
eighteen eighty six, he's like, yeah, Holiday fucking shoots this guy named
Gordon, because I remember back in eighteen seventy nine when it happened. You
know, they never found him guilty. And then this Mexican gets pissed because
he killed Gordon, so Doc kills him too. But like I had said,
you know, Bat Masterson, he was kind of prone to exaggerate facts
and making his own life story like a lot more colorful. And he did
that same ship with Holiday too. You know, he fucking made him look
bad. He put a lot of words into his mouth. He created all
these events that Holiday did as well. So by September of eighteen seventy nine,
man Doc Holiday is pretty much developed an extreme reputation for his skill with
a gun as well as with gambling and cards. A gamelike pharaoh gives the
men the power to stop time. That is the appeal in my observation.
When the bed is placed, a moment is carved away from the past and
the future. In that enchanted moment, anything is possible. A man's debts
and regrets and limitations disappear. He is buying the chance to imagine, for
one moment at a time, that the next card ideal will make him rich.
John Henry Holiday. Okay, So, first and foremost, I'm going
to address not so much some questions, but kind of some questions and stuff
that people wanted me to go more in depth on, the first one being
why did Doc want to become a dentist? Well, Doc was always known
to be like a very nervous kid. He was a nervous dude. His
hands would like shake, Okay, So when his mom would teach him piano
when he was younger, she used to put pennies on the back of his
hands to steady his hands and keep them level and calm. And this is
part of the reason he was such a talented piano player, you know.
That being said, he realized that when he was doing something with his hands
that he was concentrating on, that was the only time that he was like
really calm and his hands wouldn't shake. And above that, he had also
previously mentioned to why Earp at one point in time that working on teeth was
really the only thing that kept his hands still after he got out of playing
piano. So that was one of the reasons that he did pursue dentistry because
he knew that if he was concentrating on using his hands, then his hands
would stay still. And that's also a lot there's a lot of speculation as
to why he was so fast with a six shooter is because of that.
He just had those busy, nervous hands. Another question I got that kind
of goes into the timeline. I got asked about the saloon that he had
built, and then I got asked to elaborate more on the shooting of Mike
Gordon as well. And here's how that goes down. Those actually kind of
tie into each other, all right. So the Santa Fe Company, which
was like a railroad back then, they built tracks into Las Vegas, New
Mexico, and they actually by pass a town by about a mile or so.
Well, there's a new town built near the tracks, and as soon
as that new town was built is the end of the tracks. So it's
one of those places where gambling and prostitution is just everywhere. And on July
nineteenth, eighteen seventy nine, holiday and a guy named John Joshua Webb who
was actually a former lawman but he had turned into an outlaw, and they
were seated in a saloon that Doc had built. And how this all goes
down is there was a former US Army scout by the name of Mike Gordon.
Now he goes into this saloon and he tries to persuade one of the
one of the dancers, one of the saloon girls, who actually was a
former girlfriend of his. Of Mike's, he tries to go in there and
persuade her to leave town. You know, He's like, hey, you
know, qu quit what you're doing now, just leave town with me,
you know, blah blah blah. Well she ends up refusing, so Mike
Gordon gets pissed and he goes outside and he pulls out his guns and he
just starts firing bullets into this fucking building. And pretty much nobody really knows
what happens after that, because a few hours later Gordon was found shot outside.
Like I had said, some people do attribute the shooting to Holiday,
you know, Batmasterson being one of those people. There's no actual evidence that
supports that claim that Holiday killed Gordon. There was no evidence ever found.
Well, what happens is the next day, Holiday pays a carpenter three hundred
and seventy two dollars and fifty cents to build a little building basically to how's
Doc Holliday's saloon, and John Joshua Webb is going to be his partner.
Now, the reason that Mike Gordon was not shot in Doc Holliday's saloon like
a lot of people say happened, is because when Mike Gordon was shot,
the saloon hadn't actually been built yet. So even if he would have shot
Gordon, Doc Holliday wouldn't have stuck around town. He wouldn't have built a
fucking saloon right there in town. He would have left while he was in
town. Though, in Los Vegas for that time period, it should be
known that he was fined twice for keeping a gambling table. He was also
charged again for carrying a deadly weapon. So those were three charges in a
very short amount of time. So there's a little bit of elaboration on that
right there. Now, with jumping back into this timeline, we're actually going
to answer another one of the questions that I had received about elaborating more on
bat Masterson and Doc's relationship. You know, it was a relationship of necessity.
What it was was bat Masterson was a lawman with wyat Earp. He
respected wyatt Earp, so he tolerated Doc. And you know, if Doc
could be utilized to his advantage, then they would work together. And Doc
was the same way with bat Masterson because he was a lawman, he could
help him get out of trouble whenever. Needed to think about it was bat
Masterson had so much respect for wyatt Earp, and Wyatterp credited Doc was saving
his life. So there was like a mutual respect. Now Doc and Bat
honestly couldn't really you know, they tolerated each other. They weren't really friends,
you know, they were more associates. But it was a relationship of
necessity more than anything else. Before Doc had gone back to Las Vegas.
While he was in Dodge City, he joined a team which was formed by
bat Masterson, who was a deputy US Marshal at the time. What was
going on was Batmasterson had been asked like basically start a militia to prevent an
outbreak of a small little war between the atchetson Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad,
which was known as the ATSF or just referred to as the Santa Fe,
which I just did earlier. And the other railroad was the Denver and Rio
Grand Western Railroad also known as D and R GW. Both these railroad companies
had hired people to basically fight a little war form now. They were fighting
to be the first railroad to claim the right of way across the Royal Gorge.
The Royal Gorge was one of very few natural routes, you know,
through the Rockies that crossed over the Continental Divide. Now, both of these
two factions at the railroad, they were trying to be the first to provide
this rail access to the boomtown of Leadville, Colorado, which dockheads and time
in before the Royal Gorge was a bottleneck along the Arkansas, so it was
too narrow for two railroads to pass through. There was no other access to
this area. So Doc was there for about two and a half months,
all right, and he's basically fighting like a little war among you know,
Bat Masterson and a little militia that he had formed to basically fight this other
railroad. So there's actually an intervention. There's a federal intervention which prompted the
so called what is referred to as the quote unquote Treaty of Boston, and
they ended up ending the fight, the little fighting scenario that was going on
there. The Denver and Rio Grand Western Railroad, now they ended up completing
the line first. And what they did was they leased it for the Santa
Fe Railroad to use, so they got the money for building it, and
there like, okay, Santa Fe Railroad, well, you guys can run
your trains on it, but you're gonna fucking pay us. The thing about
that was Doc Holliday and Bat Masterson and their little group of guys, they
controlled what was called the roundhouse, which is where all the locomotives were stored
and where they were all serviced and fixed and stuff like that. And what
the D and RGW Railroad did was they paid a bribe to Bat Masterson of
ten thousand dollars to basically take over that roundhouse. So they took the bribe.
Doc Holliday took his share and then ended up going back to Las Vegas.
So that's how he had a bunch of money when he got back to
Las Vegas. Hopefully that clarify as some of the questions you guys had with
getting more in depth. I know, the whole railroad thing was confusing.
It was like a whole fucking thing that was going on that I really didn't
I mean, I got in depth on it, but that was literally that
could be like a whole fucking podcast in itself, you know what I'm saying.
All Right, So what's going on is it's October eighteenth, eighteen seventy
nine. We're in Las Vegas, New Mexico, and Wyatt Earp shows up
into town and he starts telling Doc about news of a boom going on in
a place called Tombstone, Arizona Territory. Holiday and Kate were just settling into
their life in Las Vegas. You know, they were kind of hesitant to
leave. But Holiday and Kate ended up joining Wyatt and his common law wife,
Maddie Blaylock, as well as Jim Earp, which was one of Wyatt's
brothers, and his wife and step daughter, and they ended up traveling the
next day to Prescott, Arizona. Now, while they're in the Arizona Territory.
In Prescott, Doc Holiday has just this crazy fucking run of good luck
on the poker tables. So you know, Kate's there with them, and
they're doing good. And like I had mentioned in part one, they had
a very tumultuous relationship. They were always fighting, like Kate would get drunk
and like very fucking abusive, and Doc Holliday wasn't a big guy, so
you know, he would just kind of take it and get pissed about it
or whatever. But at this point in time, Doc Holliday is said to
have been drinking two quarts of whiskey a day along with laudanum to help cure
his pains of tuberculosis. So they're actually like getting along at this point.
So they end up hanging out in Prescott for a long time because everything's going
pretty good right now. Now, in September of eighteen eighty, Holiday is
just has a fucking pocketful of all these gamblers money and he decides to finally
go to Tombstone. Holiday gets some living quarters for him and Kate and they're
sandwiched in between a funeral parlor and the Soma Winery. And this is on
the north side of Allen Street in sixth Street. Now Kate what she does.
She realizes an opportunity here. So as soon as they get into Tombstone.
She goes into business. She purchased a large tent and she rounded up
a few girls and a few barrels of bad, cheap whiskey. She ended
up operating what is referred to as a quote unquote sporting house. And I'm
pretty sure we all understand what the fuck that was. Okay, Wyatt Earp
had already been in Tombstone like the previous December, so Holiday, you know,
finally joins them in Tombstone. There are some accounts out there that report
that the Earth's sent for Holiday for assistance with a dealing with an outlaw faction
known as the Cowboys. So when Doc gets there, he very quickly starts
getting all tangled up in the local politics. There's a lot of violence going
on, and you know, this is some of the ship that leads up
to the gunfight at the Ok Corral. What the cowboys were. Cowboys were
mainly the Clanton mclowry families, and they were pretty much ranchers on the outskirts
of Tombstone. The way that they were operating, which you know, we'll
get to a little bit in the timeline, was they were pretty much stealing
cattle from across the Mexican border and bringing them back here, you know,
and then selling them, you know, having a butcher. They were wrestlers,
dude, they were They were fucking thieves. They were outlaws. But
Tombstone pretty much tolerated them. Okay, it was It was like a fifty
fifty thing there. Like either, you know, the townspeople were cool with
the cowboys and you know, they would help them out run with them,
and that does go along with with Sheriff John Bahn, who was the Coachis
County sheriff at the time. But there was also another half of the town
that that like, did not like the lawlessness. So the cowboys they fucking
hated that the Art brothers and Dike Holliday were in town. And basically it
was because these dudes, the cowboys knew that the Earps and Holiday weren't going
to take any shit, that they were actually going to stand up to him
and fight back. The cowboys, like I said, mainly consisted of a
Newton Clanton, which he was known as old Man Clanton, and he had
three sons named Finn, Ike, and Billie. Now the mcclowry brothers were
Frank and Tom. Another cowboy was curly Bill Barocious, and then of course
Johnny Ringo, Johnny Ringo, for those of you have seen the movie Tombstone,
that's a pretty accurate proortrayal of Johnny Ringo. He was a fucking psychopath.
He was one of those guys in the gang that his own gang members
were fucking scared to death of. It is said there's a story of him
literally shooting a guy's jaw off because he refused to have a drink with them.
This dude was legit a psychopath. These are the kind of guys that
the Earps and Dic Holliday are dealing with. And the Cowboy he has made
no qualms about saying, hey, we don't want these guys here, get
them the hell out of town. But the thing about it was is the
Coach's county sheriff, John Behan, usually always sighted with the cowboys. It's
suggested that you know, either John Beehan was in cahoots with them, like
working with them, or he was just straight up scared to death of them.
So he was absolutely no help to the townspeople whatsoever. So while they're
in Tombstone, Arizona, doc ends up becoming a regular at a place called
the Oriental Saloon. Now, whyatt Earp does own a little part of the
Oriental Saloon. So Doc is in there all the time playing poker, playing
Pharaoh, dealing Pharaoh, because as we learn from part one, Doc Holliday
is very good with cards, he's very good with numbers. So he's in
there trying to make some money. Now, the main owner of the Oriental
Saloon was a guy named Milt Joyce. Milt Joyce was not a big fan
of the Earps. He did not like Dic Holiday. There's a lot of
fucking tensions. There is a lot of tension going on in Tombstone at this
point in time. So on October tenth, eighteen eighty, this local asshole
named Johnny Tyler he starts causing trouble in the saloon. Now there's a lot
of speculation on whether or not he was just a total asshole in general,
which he was, but it has also stated I did read in a few
other places that some of the local bar owners did kind of pay him money
to go into the Oriental and kind of shake shit up a little bit.
What happens on October tenth is whyat ends up kicking his ass out, and
Doc is extremely happy about this, Like, I'm not gonna lie. Doc's
a little bit of an instigator because he's already on borrowed time as it is,
and he does not care about anything pretty much, so he's, you
know, always instigating shit. So what happens is three gets out, Johnny
Tyler goes and gets his pistol and comes back to the saloon to confront Doc.
Doc ends up drawing his gun and he challenges Tyler to a fight right
there where they stood. And when I talk about a fight, I'm not
talking about a fistfight. It was more like a pull your gun, I'm
gonna fucking kill you before you kill me type of thing. That's what a
fight was back then. So he challenged Tyler to a fight, like right
there where they stood. Tyler backed down because, like I had said,
Doc had this reputation and not that many people wanted to mess with them.
So when Doc was all adamant about, you know, draw your pistol,
man, let's do this right now, Johnny Tyler kind of backed down a
little bit. Now both men are pretty angry, and they were actually both
disarmed before any shots were fired. Now, Johnny Tyler ends up leaving now
the owner of the Oriental. Like I had said, Milt Joyce, he
did not like Holiday or the herbs at all. But what he did was
he started getting on Doc. He started instigating shit with Doc Holliday. So
Doc gets pissed and he's already drunk, and Joyce ends up kicking Holiday out
of the saloon. Well, when they broke up the fight, they took
Doc and Johnny Tyler's guns. So Doc demands his gun back, okay,
and Milt Joyce pretty much says no, I'm not giving you your gun back,
Like, get the hell out of here. Doc leaves and he goes
and gets a double action Revolver, and he comes back to the saloon.
Joyce sees Doc walk in the door and he's got a pistol in his hand.
So Joyce pulls out a Revolver himself. Holliday just starts pulling the trigger.
Man just starts shooting. Okay. Supposedly he one of two things happened.
Either he shoots the gun out of Joyce's hand and puts a bullet through
the palm of his hand, or he shoots his thumb off. Either way,
I did read several accounts that say that Doc Holliday did shoot the gun
out of his hand, and I did read in more than one place that
the bullet did go through the palm of his hand, because he almost last
lost his hand because of it. And now while that happens, one of
the bartenders, a guy by the last name of Parker, he goes over
and he tries to disarm Doc. And while this struggle is going on,
Doc ends up shooting him in the foot, blows his big toe off,
and during the fight, Doc drops his pistol. Well, Joyce runs over
picks up the pistol. He ended up firing one shot that missed Doc,
but he when he had the pistol, he pistol whipped him hit him over
the head with it. By about that time, law enforcement officer by the
last name of Bennett pretty much appeared into the building. He separated them in.
Now the Epitaph, which was a local newspaper there in Tombstone, reported
that a quote Holiday was picked up and placed in a chair, it being
generally thought from his bloody appearance, that he was severely, if not fatally
hurt. So, I mean, when Milt Joyce cracked Doc Holliday over the
head with this pistol. We're not sure how many times. I mean,
it messed him up good. So he's sitting in a chair just bleeding already,
on top of being drunken stuff like that. It hurt him pretty bad.
But I will say this on a side note, the Tombstone Nuggets account
which the Tombstone Nugget was very negatively biased, okay, towards Doc and the
Herb brothers. Now, they said that Doc shot at Joyce first, who
was ten feet away at the time, and then Joyce approached Doc in order
to pistol whip him. Now, this really doesn't seem very likely. It
says it is doubtful that Joyce approached an armed Doc Holliday who was already firing
at him from a distance of ten feet, So it makes sense that ducking
for cover would probably have made more sense, and that along with maybe returning
fire rather than attempting to pistol whip Doc. And they said that it is
more likely that Doc's wilde shots were fired when Joyce first leap upon him from
the bar melt. Joyce's attack probably was provoked. Karen Holliday Tanner, who
wrote the book A Doc Holliday a family affair. I did relay on that
book for a lot of research. She went ahead and said by Doc's reappearance
with the gun, and also, perhaps not surprisingly, by something Doc said.
The nugget claimed that upon returning to the saloon, Doc made a remark
to Joyce that if he didn't give him his gun back, he would not
appear well in print, which basically says, you know, your name wouldn't
look good in the paper after I kill you. Man. There's no doubt
about the fact that that Doc Holliday was hurt, really bad, and he
was bleeding from the one or two or three blows that joy had dealt him.
But that little quote about Doc Holliday coming back in and basically tell Milt
Joyce, hey, man, give me my gun back because your name ain't
gonna look good no obituary, dude. You know, I thought that was
a pretty cool little fact, and that was something that Karen Holliday Tanner did
go on to say, so I thought that was pretty awesome. On October
eleventh, eighteen eighty, Doc, believe it or not, is brought up
on charges because of this shooting. A warrant is issued for his arrest on
a charge of assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill. Now.
The very next day, on October twelfth, eighteen eighty, the Daily Nugget,
which was the local paper there in Tombstone, did report that quote.
Holiday appeared in court and the custody of Town Marshal Fred White. None of
the prosecution witnesses appeared in court. The defendant offered a plea of guilty to
assault and battery. It was accepted and the charge of assault with a deadly
weapon was dismissed. Holiday was fined twenty dollars and the cost of eleven dollars
and twenty five cents end quote. So Dic Holiday again, you know,
gets out of some charges because literally none of these witnesses ever appeared in court
on behalf of the prosecution to charge Doc Holiday. Now, there is a
lot of speculation that, you know, maybe whiter p had a lot to
do with that and kind of talking them out of it. You know.
So there is that things are going pretty shitty for Doc Holiday right now.
He has that that he's dealing with right now, and his relationship with Big
Notes Kate is going to shit now. They did live together, but Dic
was really concentrating on his drinking and gambling, and Kate pretty much was concentrating
on her drinking and you know her other duties as a saloon woman. So
you know, they were doing a lot of fighting. And around this time,
Kate is starting to be very loud, very abusive when she's drunk.
So Doc finally decides that he's had enough and he throws her ass out.
Okay. On October twenty eighth, Tombstone Town, Marshall, guy by the
name of Fred White was trying to break up a group of just some late
night dudes getting rowdy. You know, they were some of the cowboys,
and pretty much what they're doing is they're out on Allen Street and Tombstone in
there fucking howling and shooting at the moon. So he walks over and he
tries to confiscate the pistol of Curly Bill Barrocius. Now he ended up getting
shot in the abdomen. Now, Wyatt Earp goes over and he does what
they call he went over in Buffalo to Curly Bill Brocius. Now what that
means is basically just went over and intimidated the shit out of him, and
he ended up knocking him unconscious and he arrested him. A lot of years
wait later, Wyatt ended up telling his biographer that he thought bro Sis was
still armed at the time and had not noticed that Brosius's pistol was already on
the ground, so that's why he kind of took it to the next level
and ended up knocking his ass out. The pistol when it was picked up,
it contained one fired off cartridge and he had five live rounds in it.
Curly Bill ended up waving a preliminary hearing so he in his case could
be transferred to the Tucson District Court because he thought they would get more fair
of a trial there. Now White ended up dying two days later because of
the shooting, and in return, curly Bill Brosius ended up getting charged with
murder. Now on December twenty seventh, eighteen eighty end court, Wyatt RB
himself did testify that he thought the shooting was accidental. It was also demonstrated
that curly Bill's pistol could have been fired from the half cock position. That
combined with the fact that Fred White left a statement before he died he didn't
die immedia, and he actually said himself that the shooting was not intentional,
that it was an accident, So the judge ended up releasing curly Bill Brocius.
But Curly Bill kind of had a little bit resentment towards Wyatt Earp for
beating the shit out of him when he was arresting him, because Whader pretty
much did, I mean, he kicked his ass pretty good. So Curly
Bill just kind of had that kind of had that resentment about him ever since
then. So on March fifteenth, eighteen eighty one, this is where we
start getting in some pretty cool stuff. There were four masked men that attempted
to hold up of the Caneer and Company stage near Contentions City. Now,
these four masked robbers killed the stage driver, which was Bud Philpott. Another
guy named Peter Roig, who was a passenger. Doc was not involved.
He was later accused by the cow Boys of being involved. It was proven
later on that the cowboys themselves were actually involved or connected somewhat to this robbery.
So they're basically taking an opportunity to pass this on to Doc and to
get him into trouble because nobody liked Doc, you know what I'm saying.
So according to Wyatter, Doc was in town at the Alhambra Saloon at the
time of the robbery was reported, and had been in town since late afternoon.
Now the stage was robbed at ten PM, and this was actually while
Doc was dealing or playing Pharaoh. But a friend of Doc's, who was
a respectable jeweler, who used to be a respectable jeweler, i should say,
by the name of Leonard, is named as one of the bandits.
That's how the Cowboys kind of got Doc's name going on in there. Doc's
involvement came pretty much from that former jeweler by the last name of Leonard and
the Cowboy faction and Sheriff Behan himself. Now they're basically trying to cover up
their own involvement in the robbery. So all the residents in this town,
they even thought the members of the Cowboy gang, you know, Ike Clanton,
Frank Stillwell, Curly Bill dude named Pete Spencer were involved in the holdup.
So literally, like the whole town is like Cowboys are the ones who
did it. Sheriff Behan's probably involved too, Like why the fuck are they
trying to blame Dike Holliday for this shit? So Cowboy faction ended up accusing
Holiday of being one of the holdup men, and Milt Joyce, the owner
of the Oriental he was actually county supervisor as well. Now him and Sheriff
John Behan. What they did was they found Kay on one of her drunken
binges. Okay, she's pissed off because Dike Holliday had thrown her ass out.
So she's sitting there just talking all this shit about Dic Holliday and this
and that. So Joyce and be Hand pretty much see this as an opportunity,
right, So they go over and they buy her all the whiskey that
she can drink, and they start sympathizing with her, you know, like,
oh man, he's such a horrible guy. You know, I can't
believe he did that to you. You're such a good woman. And what
they start doing is start suggesting on how she can even the score with Doc
Holiday. Now what happens is they eventually persuade her to sign an affidavit implicating
Doc Holiday in this hold up. They also persuade her to say that he
was the guy who pulled the trigger on the gun that killed Bud Philpott.
So Justice of the Peace guy named by the name of Wells Spicer. He
issues a warrant for Holiday's arrest and he's using big nosed Kate's Affidavid for this.
Now, while Kate is so bring up, what the Earth's are doing
is they start rounding up witnesses who could testify Doc's whereabouts on the night that
the hold up occurred. And this is very very important to the Oka Koral
thing. Okay, now listen, what Wyatt Earp does is he secretly goes
to Ike Clanton and offers him money. Now, what he's doing is he's
trying to find out the whereabouts of the remaining stage robber and basically, if
he gets this information, he can clear Doc's name and get him out of
this trouble. Not only that, but Whyatt's planning on running for sheriff as
well, so this would help his political ambitions and he'll get his best friend
out of trouble. Now, the reason we know this this is fact because
Wyatt actually admitted this in a later newspaper interview. He had these two motives
right here. So when Kate actually sobered up, she realized what she had
done and she went ahead and she insisted that you know she had signed a
paper while drinking with b Hannon Joyce, but that she couldn't remember what the
paper was when all these witnesses came forward, witnesses to you know, Holiday's
whereabouts at the time of the robbery, and then Kate saying, Hey,
I don't I was so fucking drunk, Like these two guys got me to
sign this AFFI David, I don't even know what it was. Basically,
it was this big plot run by the Cowboy faction. Holiday ends up getting
released. The district attorney labeled the charges ridiculous and he pretty much threw them
out. Now, Doc at this time is like seriously pissed at Kate,
all right, and he gives her some money and he pretty much puts her
on a stage coach and he where the funk out of town. He's like,
just go, I'm not even dealing with this shiit anymore. So she
gets out of town and basically at this point, as far as he's concerned,
his debt to her is even because she did break him out of the
house situation in Fort Griffin by you know, setting that fucking fire and pretty
much you know, had the horses waiting when they went to Dodge City and
stuff, and on his side of the argument, he's like, we're even
okay, you got me out of jail, but you literally almost got me
charged with murder. Here's some money, get the fuck out of town.
We're done. She supposedly had made like two or three trips back to Tombstone
to visit Doc, because she does say that she was a witness to the
gunfight at the Okay Corral. We're not one hundred percent sure if she actually
was or not, but we do know that they did share a room at
a boarding house by the name of Missus Flies boarding House, So there's a
very good chance that she was back into town by the time the shooting at
the Okay Corral did happen. Now, even before the stage coach was robbed,
because dude, these stage coaches were robbed pretty often by the cowboys.
All right, all these businessmen, and like the higher ups in Tombstone,
they're pretty much sick of like all this violence going on with the cowboys.
Along with that, the state of Arizona is starting to get pissed at the
cowboys because they keep crossing the Mexican border and coming back and they're rustling cattles
and mules. They did not want a border war with Mexico because you have
the Mexican authorities saying, hey, you guys, don't fucking do something about
this, We're going to So there's even more attention right there now. Along
with that, Whyatt wanted to win the upcoming sheriff's election. He had been
running against, you know, Sheriff Behan, who actually lost his last election.
Now, Behan is described as corrupt. You know, more often than
not, Behand only enforced the law when it pretty much suited him. He
was that kind of cop. He was seriously corrupt, like I said,
even before the Okay Corral. Whyatt figured that enforcing the law against the cowboys,
which Behand would never really do, would likely win him that upcoming sheriff's
election. So Wyatt wanted the town of Tombstone to see him as a tough,
a fair kind of guy with morals and stuff like that. So he
would pretty much be the perfect man for sheriff. So he's sitting here like,
you know, he's promoting his image and the local press, you know,
and he has business connections in town, so they're supporting him. And
more often than not, you know, in a place like Tombstone at this
point in time, they're more often they're going to elect a hero, which
Behand obviously was not. Behan was kind of a piece of shit. Okay,
So Wyatt's whole thing was cleaning up the town. Behand knew that he
was gunning for his job, and they both had that animosity for each other.
Doc and Wyatt being such good friends. They were fiercely loyal to each
other. Okay. Doc's reputation and kind of shady past, you know,
as well as the fact that he had taken part in the stagecoach robbery,
kind of meant that Doc was he was literally a political liability for Wyatt.
But Wyatt honestly did not care. He still kept him close, He still
always had his back, He still defended him. That was the cool thing
about it. Like to Wyatt, having Doc around to have his back in
a fight was priceless. They trusted each other, and that's what it came
down to in the end. So moving on to August thirteenth, eighteen eighty
one. All right, at this point in time, the border between New
Mexico and Arizona is there's a lot of tension there and some ship goes down.
Okay, old man Clanton, who technically at this time is the head
of the cowboys. He's driving a herd of cattle into Tombstone Market. He's
expected, you know, to have a quick sale, make a quick profit,
done with it. Well, what ends up happening is they made camp
the first night, which was on August twelfth. Most likely it was in
Guadaloupe Canyon, which was about one mile south of the International Boarder. Now
with him were Dixie Lee Gray, Billy Lang, Bud Snow, Billy Buyers,
Harry Earnshaw, and Jim Crane. Now Crane was one of the four
men who had attempted to rob the stage coach near Contention Shit City, like
five months earlier that they ended up trying to blame Doc for so. The
other three men who had been involved were Harry Head, Billy Leonard, the
former jeweler who was friends with Doc Holliday, and another guy named Luther King.
Those were the four masked men who robbed that stage coach near Contention City.
Now Luther King was arrested by Morgan Earp Believe it or not, he
had quote unquote escaped from Sheriff b Han's jail, so Head and Leonard had
been killed by Ike and Bill, a guy named Bill Haslett over in New
Mexico Territory for that right there. Now, in the early morning of August
thirteenth, the Clanton party was attacked by riflemen. Lang Gray, Crane,
Snow, and old Man Clant were all killed. Buyers and Earnshaw were wounded,
but they did escape. Okay. The attackers were said to be Mexicans.
Now, several historians believe that the Earp Federal Posse was involved in the
death of these men, and that would have included Doc Holliday. Now it
should be stated that supposedly, according to some accounts, Doc Holliday in this
altercation had been shot in the leg and it was kind of suspicious because some
historians say that he was lightly wounded and possibly walking with a cane. But
there are other historians who totally disregard this fact, so it's hard to tell
what exactly happened. Now, records show that Marshall Crawley Dake was ordered to
send a posse down to the border to pretty much put to rest some of
these disturbances caused by the cowboys. Now, Marshall Dake. He trusted wid
Earp and likely it's more than likely wid Earp was head of this posse.
Okay. Now, logically the first place for his federal posse to search would
have been the area, you know, where Arizona, New Mexico, Sonora,
and Chihuahua, Mexico all meet, and it appears that they did.
They did indeed find the cowboys in Guadaloupe Canyon or possibly Skeleton Canyon, and
the posse must have been happy to see Jim Crane with them, because you
know, Jim Crane was one of the one of the guys who robbed the
stage coach. Now, the Mexican government was they had a stance, you
know, with the cowboy wrestling problem. It was pretty much either the Americans
would have to stop the cowboys from coming across the border to steal or the
Mexicans were going to handle it themselves. So there may have been some Mexicans
present in the canyon too, either working with the American lawman or like a
joint effort type thing, or they might have just been there like observing the
American effort to take out the cowboys. But dic Holiday and another Earb brother
by the name of Warren were wounded at the border gun battle, and they
did not appear in Tombstone until they had recovered. So you know, there's
that side of historians that say that, So that would explain why Holiday had
a cane when the Okay Corral did happen, and why Warren RB actually did
miss the gunfight at the Okay Corral. Now, according to some other historians,
it was the Mexican authorities, not the art Posse, who were involved
in the shootout with the cowboys, you know who, Like I'd said,
they were known for stealing cattle across the border. So you know, you
have the other side saying, you know, the EARP Posse was working with
the Mexican authorities. You know, we really are not sure. All we
know is that the Earps were directly involved with investigating the stagecoach robbery. We
do know that, all right, that is fact. So here's what happens
on October twenty fifth, eighteen eighty one. Now, when we start getting
into the Okay Corral shootout, I'm just going to let you know right now,
like there are so many varying eyewitness accounts. I literally had to take
all these accounts I had to put them all together, and then I kind
of had to go through them and make sense of what happened. Now,
when the Okay Corral shootout does come, because that happened on October twenty six,
where the day before this is what leads up to it. You got
to keep in mind that it's very fast paced. This all happened. The
Okay Karl shoot out happened in a matter of thirty seconds, so there's a
lot of stuff going on. This is leading up. This is the day
before October twenty fifth, eighteen eighty one. Doc and Kate had pretty much
by this time kind of rekindled their romance, and they were in Tucson.
Ike Clampton spends the entire day in Tombstone just getting ship faced drunk, all
right, and he's going from saloon to saloon, and he's threatening to kill
the RPS and Doc Holiday basically telling every single person who would listen, I'm
gonna kill these guys, so big nos. Kate made a statement saying that
Perr and Doc were in Tucson. Doc was playing Pharaoh, Kate said,
and I quote, I was standing behind him when Morgan RP came and tapped
Doc on the shoulder and said, Doc, we want you in Tombstone tomorrow.
Better come up this evening. Now, Doc claimed that they went back
to their room and quote Doc left me at his room and went with Morgan
at ten thirty pm that night end quote. Now that later that night Doc
gets into Tombstone. Okay, Ike Clanton is kind of in panic mode,
and why he's in panic mode is because of his involvement was selling out the
cowboys to the Earps, because like I had mentioned, Earp had secretly made
that deal with Ike Clant to sell out the other cowboys to basically clear Doc's
name with his involvement in the stagecoach robbery. So Ike's kind of in panic
mode because he's scared that his actions are going to be discovered. When he
sees Doc Holliday arrive in to town, he's he's pissed because he thinks that
Wyatt had told him about their arrangement about you know him and why it's arranged.
So Ike accuses Whyat of telling Doc about it, he was afraid that
that Doc Holiday might leak the story to the other cowboys or to the other
people in town. So Whyatt tells Ike Clant He's like, listen, I
didn't tell Doc anything about the payoff. I didn't tell him that I gave
you money to sell out your friends. You know, because, as you're
going to come to find out, Ike clantons, he's a total piece of
shit. He's only looking out for himself all the time. So Whyatt tells
him? He's like, listen, dude, I didn't tell Doc anything about
the payoff. So later that in night, Doc starts noticing, Hey,
why why is he so fucking weird? Why is he being all nervous and
panicky? So Whyatt actually tells Doc? Then he's like, Okay, here's
the deal, here's what happened. So Doc's spending the next few hours drinking,
playing some cards, and about two hours later, Doc and Morgan are
pretty much verbally abusing the shit out of Ike Clanton. They're making fun of
him that you know, they're on them all kinds of names. Ike Clanton
reaches his boiling point. So at one am, Doc Holliday gets hungry and
he goes to the Alhambra's eating counter to get some food. Okay, Doc
and Ike have a confrontation. Now, during this confrontation, Doc is sitting
there cursing at him, calling him a damned liar and a son of a
bitch of a cowboy. You know, those are quoted because there's a lot
of witnesses to this. Clanton pretty much says that, you know, by
selling information to Wyatt, he was really trying to lure you know, the
earth Posse into a trap. You know, So he's kind of covering his
tracks. He's like, listen, the only reason I sold out members of
my own gang is because I literally was trying to kill Wyatt Earp, which
it probably wasn't true. You know, he was trying to save some face.
So Doc Holliday gets even more pissed. Okay, and he had been
hearing about all the talk about Ike Clanton, saying, hey, you know,
I clans run around town telling everybody I'm gonna kill the Europe So I'm
gonna kill Doc Holiday as soon as I see them. So Doc Holiday walks
up to him, looks I'm straight in the face and quote, I heard
you're going to kill me. Ike, get out your gun and commence.
So Doc standard there literally looking at Ike Clanton saying, I heard you're gonna
kill me. Man, pull out, You're gonna do it right now.
That pretty much ended the cursing match, and Ike Clanton says, you know,
hey, I'm unarmed. I have nothing to fight with. So Doc
Holliday says, go get healed. I'll wait. So he's basically telling Ike
Clant, go get a gun, dude, I'll wait for you. Come
on back. So he's sitting there just kind of antagonizing him even further,
and he tells Ike Clanton that his big mouth is what caused his old man
to be killed, and that Doc Holiday himself had had the pleasure of pulling
the trigger and killing him and he would take just as much enjoyment in doing
the same Tyke. Doc Holliday is known to you know, kind of you
know, be an instigator, but there's still that speculation that there's a good
possibility that TyC Holiday was the one who killed his fucking dad. So he's
in this bar literally just looking this dude straight in the face, like I
heard you're gonna kill me, man, pull out your gun and do it.
And to piss I clamping off even more, he tells him he was
the one who killed his dad and he would enjoy just as much if he
killed him too. So that's what's going on. Okay, So Virgil or
who at this time is a US Deputy Marshal, and Wyatt, who's an
appointed and acting city Marshal, by Virgil, and Morgan, who is also
a sworn officer. They're all present during this confrontation. That's how we know
it's so well documented. And yeah, I will say that Whyatt was known
to speak in favor of Doc Holiday quite a bit. But Virgiler was one
of the few that one of the few Earb brothers that really didn't care for
Doc. Like Virgil, Earp was known as you know, a very fair
guy. So a lot of what he says is true, and he had
no qualms about saying, hey, listen, I really didn't like the guy.
He was best friends with two of my brothers. I really didn't care
for him. You know, he was an all right guy. So when
he said something, you know, we usually take it as fact. And
all three of these guys said the same thing. So Virgil tells Doc and
Ike that he would arrest both of them if they continue the argument. Well
why it ends up convincing Doc to just go away. You know, He's
like, just come on with me, man, let's just go back to
the room. And Whyatt later says, you know, you know, Doc
was pretty fucking pissed, all right, but he says, you know,
so was Ike. But Ike wasn't as easily led away by the earps like
they're trying to leave Dike away. And he's still making threats, you know,
the whole time, he's talking about killing Doc for the rest of the
night, up until the early morning hours. Okay, he's saying, quote,
I promise to kill you when the others come to town. And basically
he's saying, you know, when my other cowboys come to town, you
guys are all dead. So Ike runs into Wyatt a little bit later,
after he had dropped Doc Holiday off at the room. Ike tells him,
he says, tell your consumptive friend, you're Arizona Nightingale. He's a dead
man tomorrow. And Wyatt looks at him and he says, don't you tangle
with Doc Holiday. He'll kill you before you've begun. Ike looks at him
and says, get ready for a showdown. All right, that's all we
have for part one. Part two will be out soon enough. I hope
you enjoyed this, and I can guarantee if you did, you're gonna love
Part two that much more that Epistas to do this, Spists Stills to do
this, Spot Stars Stills to do those bass I and I and I